We agree, and the first section of our source code policy is unequivocal: We use open-source software, and we do so because it helps us fulfill our mission.

Open-source software works because it enables people from around the world to share their contributions with each other. The CFPB has benefited tremendously from other people’s efforts, so it’s only right that we give back to the community by sharing our work with others.

This brings us to the second part of our policy: When we build our own software or contract with a third party to build it for us, we will share the code with the public at no charge. Exceptions will be made when source code exposes sensitive details that would put the Bureau at risk for security breaches; but we believe that, in general, hiding source code does not make the software safer.

We’re sharing our code for a few reasons:

First, it is the right thing to do: the Bureau will use public dollars to create the source code, so the public should have access to that creation.

Second, it gives the public a window into how a government agency conducts its business. Our job is to protect consumers and to regulate financial institutions, and every citizen deserves to know exactly how we perform those missions.

Third, code sharing makes our products better. By letting the development community propose modifications , our software will become more stable, more secure, and more powerful with less time and expense from our team. Sharing our code positions us to maintain a technological pace that would otherwise be impossible for a government agency.

The CFPB is serious about building great technology. This policy will not necessarily make that an easy job, but it will make the goal achievable.

While governments around the world have been moving to embrace open source for a long time, adoption has been pretty slow in the U.S., though it is steadily growing as more federal agencies revise their guidelines and regulations, and some states pass laws requiring the consideration of open source options. But as a new agency that actively pursues the opportunities presented by technology, the CFPB is ahead of the curve. TechCrunch's Scott Merrill got additional details, like the fact that they are trying to lead by example:

I asked Willey what kind of advocacy — if any — the CFPB was doing (or planning to do) for open source software within the government. He shared that they’re using GitHub Enterprise internally, and have fielded a number of questions from other agencies about how they procured that and set it up. “It’s hard for us to have these conversations with other agencies without implicitly advocating an open source philosophy,” Willey told me. “So instead of trying to sell open source to other agencies on principle, we’re finding that it’s a lot easier to prove the value of open source software by showing our colleagues the great results it has gotten us.”

I was curious whether the CFPB’s policy is the natural result of more digital natives taking government jobs. According to Willey, it was “simply the byproduct of building a government organization from scratch in the information age: we are able to craft our technology philosophy with a modern perspective.”

It's good to see people in government placing an emphasis on staying at the forefront of technology, especially in terms of open source. The entire philosophy of open source is perfectly matched to the ideals of a transparent, accountable government that serves and belongs to its citizens, and hopefully the CFPB will lead more agencies in that direction.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Depending on how you look at it, the current state of space exploration can be seen as dismally underfunded -- or as the most amazingly productive in history. Unmanned probes are checking out all sorts of interesting destinations in our solar system, but manned missions have lately been limited to orbiting the Earth. The unmanned space race is generating plenty of fascinating science, nonetheless. Here are just a few interesting developments in the field of space exploration.

from the step2-startups dept

The latest in our Step2 Startups series is from QVIVO, a maker of home based media center/storage systems, who have added a cloud syncing system, and are wondering what the biggest obstacles are for people hosting their own media in the cloud. Is it a legal issue? Cultural? Technological? What would it take for you to be willing to make use of such a service?

from the functional-forgeries dept

M-CAM's analysis of the Yahoo/Facebook patent nuclear war has some interesting points. It's worth checking out the full thing, but I wanted to call attention to two them. First, in showing just how ridiculous the patent situation is in the social networking space, M-CAM looks just at the 10 patents that Facebook is asserting in its counterclaims against Yahoo, and discovered that there are over 30,000 related patents that cover similar aspects -- many of which have been around for a while. Notably, IBM (who just sold Facebook a bunch of patents) holds the largest batch of such patents, but that's only 270 patents, meaning these patents are really widely spread out.

In other words, there's a massive patent thicket in the social networking space. I don't how see anyone can legitimately suggest that the patent system is working when someone developing a social network has to be concerned about the fact that they might get sued over upwards of 30,000 patents. If anything, this is just another example of the point that Tim Lee and Christina Mulligan recently made in showing how it's mathematically impossible to avoid infringing on patents if you're developing software these days. No sane person thinks that 30,000 patents make sense for social networking.

As the report notes, a very large number of these patents are "functional forgeries" in that they cover stuff that's in other patents. Really what this goes back to is the fact that the patent system relies on patent examiners to magically know what's new and non-obvious. But, if it's impossible for those who actually work in the space to know about the 30,000 related patents, how do you think a patent examiner does it? The answer is they don't. Patent examiners simply don't scale, and that's a huge problem with the way the system is designed today.

And that brings us to the second point in the M-CAM report, which highlights just how ridiculous the process is to get patent examiners to approve a patent can be. M-CAM looks specifically at the process that got Patent 8,150,913 approved (which happened the same day that Facebook used it in the lawsuit). The report notes that the 913 patent was originally rejected by patent examiner Bharat N. Barot, but the filer amended the claims, and the second time around Barot found them suddenly worthy of a patent. You might think that the changes to go from non-patentable and obvious to patentable and non-obvious would be pretty big. Not so much. M-CAM puts the original claim 1 and the approved claim next to each other and highlights the only difference in blue, which was a ridiculously minor word change towards the end.

Original Submitted Claim 1 of US 8,150,913
Dated: August 22, 2011

Issued Claim 1 of US 8,150,913
Dated: April 3, 2012

1. A computer system that provides a service for controlled access
over a network to user profiles having associated image content
provided by registered users of the service, the computer system
comprising:

a networked server system accessible by remote user devices via the
network, the networked server system comprising at least one
processor and at least one memory; and

at least one database accessible by the networked server system and
configured to store the user profiles of the registered users, image
content items associated with the user profiles, and relationship data
that specifies access relationships established between the registered
users;

the networked server system being programmed, via executable
program instructions, to:

allow users to register with the service and the registered users to
each create a user profile comprising profile information about the
respective registered user and a plurality of image content items of
data types corresponding to one or more of photo data or video data;
allow a first registered user to identify other registered users via a
user interface and to indicate a desire to establish an access
relationship with the other registered users, wherein each access
relationship allows the first registered user to access a user profile of
an identified other registered user via the user interface and image
content items of the identified other registered user via the user
interface;

establish access relationships between the first registered user and
the other registered users without requiring the other registered
users to individually approve the access relationships;
allow the first registered user to select from the user interface the
user profile of another registered user with respect to which an
access relationship has been established with the first registered user,
in response to which the networked server system provides the
selected user profile for display to the first registered in the user
interface, wherein the selected user profile includes representations
of at least some of the image content items associated with the
selected user profile;

allow the first registered user to select and view one of the image
content items in the user interface; and

allow the first registered user to interact with the selected image
content item via interactive controls of the user interface.

1. A computer system that provides a service for controlled access
over a network to user profiles having associated image content
provided by registered users of the service, the computer system
comprising:

a networked server system accessible by remote user devices via the
network, the networked server system comprising at least one
processor and at least one memory; and

at least one database accessible by the networked server system and
configured to store the user profiles of the registered users, image
content items associated with the user profiles, and relationship data
that specifies access relationships established between the registered
users;

the networked server system being programmed, via executable
program instructions, to:

allow users to register with the service and the registered users to
each create a user profile comprising profile information about the
respective registered user and a plurality of image content items of
data types corresponding to one or more of photo data or video data;
allow a first registered user to identify other registered users via a
user interface and to indicate a desire to establish an access
relationship with the other registered users, wherein each access
relationship allows the first registered user to access a user profile of
an identified other registered user via the user interface and image
content items of the identified other registered user via the user
interface;

establish access relationships between the first registered user and
the other registered users without requiring the other registered
users to individually approve the access relationships;
allow the first registered user to select from the user interface the
user profile of another registered user with respect to which an
access relationship has been established with the first registered user,
in response to which the networked server system provides the
selected user profile for display to the first registered user in the user
interface, wherein the selected user profile includes representations
of at least some of the image content items associated with the
selected user profile;

allow the first registered user to select and view at least one of the
image content items associated with the selected user profile in the
user interface; and

allow the first registered user to interact with the selected image
content item via interactive controls of the user interface.

Yes, the words in blue are apparently the sum total of the difference between something that's unpatentable and something that gives you a monopoly you can sue over.

from the time-to-speak-up dept

Update: There is now a new draft of CISPA that has rendered some (though unfortunately not all) of this analysis obsolete.

The forces behind HR 3523, the dangerous Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act which is going to move forward in Congress at the end of the month, are beginning to get cagey about the growing backlash from the internet community. In an attempt to address some of the key concerns, the bill's authors, representatives Mike Rogers and Dutch Ruppersberger, hosted a conference call specifically geared at digital reporters. The invitation was for "Cyber Media and Cyber Bloggers" (seriously) and took place at 7am Silicon Valley time—thus demonstrating that they are totally in touch with the tech community. During the call, the representatives were intent on hammering certain points home: that the bill respects privacy and civil liberties, is not about surveillance, is targeted at actions by foreign states, and is nothing like SOPA.

Unfortunately, none of that is really true. The text of the bill, even with the two key amendments made since (all pdf links and embedded below), is still full of extremely broad definitions which fail to create the safeguards that the representatives insist are present, and which leave room for dangerous unintended consequences.

CISPA at a Glance
In broad terms, CISPA is about information sharing. It creates broad legal exemptions that allow the government to share "cyber threat intelligence" with private companies, and companies to share "cyber threat information" with the government, for the purposes of enhancing cybersecurity. The problems arise from the definitions of these terms, especially when it comes to companies sharing data with the feds.

Is CISPA the new SOPA?
This is the notion that the reps behind the bill are most desperate to kill. Their primary response is that CISPA has nothing to do with seizing domains or censoring websites, but that's only true on the surface. The bill defines "cybersecurity systems" and "cyber threat information" as anything to do with protecting a network from:

‘(A) efforts to degrade, disrupt, or destroy such system or network; or

‘(B) theft or misappropriation of private or government information, intellectual property, or personally identifiable information.

It's easy to see how that definition could be interpreted to include things that go way beyond network security—specifically, copyright policing systems at virtually any point along a network could easily qualify. And since one of the recipients of the shared information would be Homeland Security—the department that includes ICE and its ongoing domain seizures—CISPA creates the very real possibility for this information to be used as part of a SOPA-like crusade to lock down the internet. So while the bill itself has nothing to do with domain seizures, it gives the people behind such seizures a potentially powerful new weapon.

The reps insist that when they refer to intellectual property, they are not thinking about media piracy or even counterfeiting, but about foreign-based attacks on domestic companies to steal their research and development (they tout examples like the plans for jet fighters). Unfortunately, the bill's definitions create no such restriction, leaving the door wide open for more creative interpretations.

How can the government use the information?
The original text of the bill was really bad, simply saying the government cannot use the information for "regulatory purposes." This was amended to be more restrictive, but not by much: now, the same broad "cybersecurity" definition applies to what they can use the data for, and as if that wasn't enough, they can also use it for "the protection of the national security of the United States." I don't need to tell you that the government is not exactly famous for narrowly interpreting "national security."

So is CISPA a surveillance bill?
The bill specifically prohibits the government from requiring anyone to hand over information, or offering any sort of "quid pro quo" data sharing arrangement. Sharing information is voluntary, and as far as the bill's supporters are concerned, that should end the debate. Of course, as we've seen with things like the warrantless wiretapping scandal, complicity between companies and the government, even when legally questionable, is common and widespread. But even if the safeguards work, CISPA will undoubtedly allow for invasions of privacy that amount to surveillance.

Firstly, while the reps insist that the bill only applies to companies and not individuals, that's very disingenuous. CISPA states that the entity providing the information cannot be an individual or be working for an individual, but the data they share (traffic, user activity, etc.) will absolutely include information about individuals. There is no incentive in the bill to anonymize this data—there is only a clause permitting anonymization, which is meaningless since the choice of what data to share is already voluntary. Note that any existing legal protections of user privacy will not apply: the bill clearly states that the information may be shared "notwithstanding any other provision of law".

So we've got the government collecting this data, potentially full of identifying information of users in the U.S. and elsewhere, and they are free to use it for any of those broadly defined cybersecurity or national security purposes. But, it gets worse: the government is also allowed to affirmatively search the information for those same reasons—meaning they are by no means limited to examining the data in relation to a specific threat. If, for example, a company were to provide logs of a major attack on their network, the government could then search that information for pretty much anything else they want.

Can CISPA be fixed?
Most of the new provisions currently being considered for CISPA have to do with adding oversight and liability to prevent the government from violating any of the terms—but that doesn't address the problems in the bill at all, since the terms are already so broad. CISPA would require significant new restrictions to come anywhere close to being a good bill—a fact that points to Congress' inability to effectively design internet regulation. Moreover, there isn't even clear evidence that new cybersecurity laws are necessary. This is a bill that needs to die.

The EFF has a tool to help you contact your representative about CISPA and the broader issue of cybersecurity legislation. The bill is going to the House the week of April 23rd, so now is the time to get involved. As with SOPA, this is not an issue that solely effects Americans: the data may come from U.S. companies, but it will involve people from all over the world—and, indeed, foreign entities are one of the bill's prime targets. It's once again time for the internet to speak up and send a clear message to Congress: don't mess with something you don't understand.

from the destroying-evidence dept

It's really rather astounding just how many things law enforcement has done wrong when it comes to the prosecution against Megaupload/Kim Dotcom. We've seen procedural errors, evidence presented totally out of context, and the desire to destroy relevant evidence. And, now, it turns out that some evidence has apparently been lost or destroyed already. Apparently the security cameras at the complex recorded the details of the raid. Furthermore, the cameras and their recordings were then seized (despite not being included in the warrant). There have been some questions about who was involved in the raid and if they used excessive force -- and there's been something of an outcry in New Zealand about how the raid went down.

Since January, the Dotcom legal team has asked for the footage, but police refused, until finally the agency agreed that an IT expert for DotCom could come and collect a copy of the footage. When the IT expert arrived at the police station, he found the server completely disassembled, and authorities said they could not reassemble it or give him any footage. Now, no one outside the police agency is sure the footage still exists.

The New Zealand police declined to give an interview to Campbell, but sent an e-mail stating, "Police would happily release the footage in question but currently have no authority to do so. The footage is contained on a hard drive lawfully seized on a warrant obtained by police at the direction of Crown Law following a properly formulated mutual legal assistance request from the United States."

Even if the case against Megaupload is really solid, it's amazing at how law enforcement involved so far appears to keep making pretty serious mistakes that make them look fairly clueless. It does not inspire confidence in the more important details of the case itself.

from the indeed dept

We mentioned recently that the Chief Tech Policy Officer at the MPAA, Paul Brigner, had jumped ship to the Internet Society -- whose position on SOPA was diametrically opposed to the MPAA's position on SOPA and similar concepts. While there was some concern that ISOC was moving away from its strong internet freedom stance, many of us suspected that perhaps the reason Brigner jumped ship was that his own views were much more in line with ISOC's. Indeed, he's now told News.com that he thinks SOPA isn't just a bad idea, but that it's not good for the health of the internet:

"Did my position on this issue evolve over the last 12 months? I am not ashamed to admit that it certainly did," Brigner writes. "The more I became educated on the realities of these issues, the more I came to the realization that a mandated technical solution just isn't mutually compatible with the health of the Internet."

And how does the MPAA feel about this?

A spokesman for the MPAA said his organization would not comment on Brigner's volte-face.

Well, what can you say when your (now former) chief tech expert agrees with what every other tech expert has been saying all along?

from the let's-get-this-straight dept

We recently posted about comments from the US Register of Copyrights, Maria Pallante, in which she stated that "copyright is for the author first and the nation second." As big believers in the original intent of copyright law, this is quite horrifying and quite wrong. And yet, amazingly, I found that this particular post, which should have been wholly uncontroversial, really seemed to get the dander up of some IP lawyers, especially on Twitter. I won't repeat them here, but two, apparently prominent, IP lawyers chose to use Twitter to point to that article and throw personal insults my way. But when challenged to support their position, they could not. And that is because they are wrong.

The US Constitution is pretty clear about the purpose of the power that it is giving Congress with the Copyright clause:

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

Now, we often see people falsely claim that this clause of the constitution guarantees authors copyrights (or inventors patents). But that is not the case. It merely gives Congress the power to do so for the expressed purpose of "promoting the progress of science and the useful arts." And, in case you're wondering, when originally written, the "science" part was directed at copyright, and it really meant "learning." Going back to the original intent, it most certainly was not created to cover all kinds of creativity -- but certainly the law has changed over time.

I have trouble understanding why so many people -- especially those employed as IP lawyers -- have so much trouble separating out the purpose from the method. Yes, the clause grants the power to Congress to create copyright law -- but for a specific purpose: "to promote the progress of science." Nowhere does it suggest, nor even hint at, the idea that copyright's purpose is to benefit creators. Rather, that is the method. So, to claim that the protections of the author are greater than or even equal to the benefits to the nation, is a clear flip-flopping of the method with the purpose. Of course, in doing so, it not only flip flops the method and the purpose, but it completely distorts the nature of copyright law, and leads to maximalist-style positions, where absolutely no consideration is given to how the public benefits (or, more importantly, is hurt) from specific changes to copyright law.

Thankfully, regular commenter Karl, provided a bunch of quotes in support of this point, from both Congress and the Supreme Court (in a comment that won our weekly award for most insightful comment), but which is worth repeating and discussing on its own:

The primary purpose of copyright is to benefit the public, a fact that has been reiterated by Congress and the Supreme Court, repeatedly:

The enactment of copyright legislation by Congress under the terms of the Constitution is not based on any natural right that the author has in his writings, for the Supreme Court has held that such rights as he has are purely statutory rights, but upon the ground that the welfare of the public will be served and progress of science and useful arts will be promoted by securing to authors forr limited periods the exclusive right to their writings. The Constitution does not establish copyrights, but provides that Congress shall have the power to grant such rights if it thinks best. Not primarily for the benefit of the author, but primarily for the benefit of the public such rights are given. Not that any particular class of citizens, however worthy, may benefit, but because the policty is believed to be for the benefit of the great body of people, in that it will stimulate writing and invention, to give some bonus to authors and inventors.

In enacting a copyright law, Congress must consider two questions: First, how much will the legislation stimulate the producer and so benefit the public; and second, how much will the monopoly granted be detrimental to the public? The granting of such exclusive rights under the proper terms and conditions, cofers a benefit upon the public that outweighs the evils of the temporary monopoly.

- H.R. Rep. No. 60-2222

It may seem unfair that much of the fruit of the compiler's labor may be used by others without compensation. As Justice Brennan has correctly observed, however, this is not "some unforeseen byproduct of a statutory scheme."... It is, rather, "the essence of copyright," ... and a constitutional requirement. The primary objective of copyright is not to reward the labor of authors, but "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts."

The limited scope of the copyright holder's statutory monopoly, like the limited copyright duration required by the Constitution, reflects a balance of competing claims upon the public interest: Creative work is to be encouraged and rewarded, but private motivation must ultimately serve the cause of promoting broad public availability of literature, music, and the other arts. The immediate effect of our copyright law is to secure a fair return for an "author's" creative labor. But the ultimate aim is, by this incentive, to stimulate artistic creativity for the general public good.

I could understand the usual kneejerk anti-Techdirt trolls lying about this.

But when the person who is supposed to be in charge of copyright doesn't even know this basic fact, it's time for her to be fired.

Now some have tried to twist Pallante's argument to suggest she meant "first" and "second" temporally. That is, she meant "copyright first benefits the artist, and then benefits the nation second." That's an interesting way to twist it, but there are two problems with this attempt to whitewash Pallante's actual words. First, it's not what she said. If she meant it in terms of the timeline, she would have said that copyright goes to the artist first, and then to the public later. But she said "for," which implies something very different. Second, and more importantly, even if she did mean that, it's simply not true. The point of copyright is not to benefit the public "eventually." It's to benefit the public first and foremost. The idea (not necessarily borne out in practice) is that if copyright is working properly, some benefit accrues to the public (generally in the form of access to new works). On top of that, if we do take Pallante's statements at the interpretation presented by her supporters, that implies that the public doesn't get a benefit until the work moves into the public domain. And, as we've seen, works no longer move into the public domain here in the US.

No matter what, this isn't just a semantic argument. This is a key argument about what this law does, who it impacts and how it is structured. And it is simply preposterous, and outside the realm of logical thought, to argue that it was designed first to benefit the artists. Yes, it does benefit the artists as a byproduct of the method. That is, it decides that if it benefits the public then it is great to also benefit the author. The general recognition of the framers was that this is not a zero sum game, where one side wins and the other side automatically loses. This is about finding the maximization point -- the point at which the public benefits the most, by figuring out what sorts of benefits should accrue to authors.

When people flip the argument on its head, and suggest that the benefit to the artists is more important than the benefit to the public, they aren't just bastardizing the point of copyright law. They are setting up a structure where the public is inevitably harmed. If you are merely judging the propriety of copyright law based on how much it benefits authors, then the entire calculus is different, and you undoubtedly hinder the promotion of progress, since at no point is that a consideration factor. One of the key framers of the Constitution, James Madison, clearly worried that this would be the way things would go:

But grants of this sort can be justified in very peculiar cases only, if at all; the danger being very great that the good resulting from the operation of the monopoly, will be overbalanced by the evil effect of the precedent; and it being not impossible that the monopoly itself, in its original operation, may produce more evil than good.

This shouldn't be controversial, nor should it lead to personal insults about my intelligence. It should be plain old common sense, that the purpose of the law is to benefit the public first, and the method chosen is through a system that benefits some authors. The hard truth that appears to block many IP lawyers from coming to grips with this is the realization that if they acknowledge this fact, it means that copyright law that can be shown not to benefit the public or (worse) to hinder the public is, on its face, unconstitutional, since Congress has no power to grant such monopolies if it is not to benefit the promotion of the progress of science.

from the again-and-again dept

We recently wrote about how HR 3523, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act -- or CISPA -- is an incredibly bad bill that would basically make it much, much easier for the government to spy on all sorts of private communications. The bill already has over 100 sponsors, some of whom were on the right side of SOPA, but seem to have gone astray here. The concern over CISPA has been growing rapidly and the netroots are speaking out and warning Congress that this is a bill they do not want.

And yet... Congress still appears ready to move forward with CISPA the week of April 23rd. And the amazing (no, astounding) thing is that many politicians in Congress have no idea that people are up in arms over this yet. In talking to different people on Capitol Hill, the story is along the lines of "oh, is there some controversy over this?" Like SOPA early on, it appears that Congress simply takes for granted that if you call something one thing (whether it's "stopping piracy" or "protecting cybersecurity") no one will bother looking at the details to realize just how problematic the bill actually is.

But this is a bad, bad bill, which effectively will lead to significant spying on internet usage and private communications by the government with little to no oversight -- and that includes not just domestic law enforcement, but military spying as well. The whole thing is absolutely crazy (especially when there are less onerous bills that are much more sensible).

The truly amazing part to me is the fact that politicians in Congress would simply think that there's no problem making massive internet regulatory change without actually looking at the impact on ordinary users and how they feel about it so soon after SOPA. It seems clear that many elected officials still haven't received the message that politicians should not be mucking with the internet when they clearly don't understand it.

from the disruption-at-work dept

Tim Lee points us to a really fantastic (as per usual) discussion with Clay Shirky about media disruption, in which he makes the key point that publishing is no longer a job, but a button:

Publishing is not evolving. Publishing is going away. Because the word “publishing” means a cadre of professionals who are taking on the incredible difficulty and complexity and expense of making something public. That’s not a job anymore. That’s a button. There’s a button that says “publish,” and when you press it, it’s done.

In ye olden times of 1997, it was difficult and expensive to make things public, and it was easy and cheap to keep things private. Privacy was the default setting. We had a class of people called publishers because it took special professional skill to make words and images visible to the public. Now it doesn’t take professional skills. It doesn’t take any skills. It takes a Wordpress install.

Now, of course, publishing as a profession means more than just making public, but that is the root of it, and Shirky is absolutely right that that role is changing completely -- and that means that the industries that built themselves up by glorifying their ability to be a gatekeeper in making things public are going to struggle to adapt. There certainly are other important roles, but they're not "publishing" per se.:

The question isn’t what happens to publishing — the entire category has been evacuated. The question is, what are the parent professions needed around writing? Publishing isn’t one of them. Editing, we need, desperately. Fact-checking, we need. For some kinds of long-form texts, we need designers. Will we have a movie-studio kind of setup, where you have one class of cinematographers over here and another class of art directors over there, and you hire them and put them together for different projects, or is all of that stuff going to be bundled under one roof? We don’t know yet. But the publishing apparatus is gone. Even if people want a physical artifact — pipe the PDF to a printing machine.

When you think about it, this really does hit on the key point of disruption for so many of the industries we talk about today. The main role that the gatekeepers had was in helping to "make your work public." But that role isn't needed any more (nor is there any real gate any more). You can make anything public that you want and reach the entire world. Of course, there are still plenty of other things -- making it better, promoting it, monetizing it, etc. And all of those roles are very important, but the role of making something public was the only one that really had that gate. And since there was that gate, the gatekeeper could control everything and demand total ownership over the work. That's what we've seen for centuries.

The difference today is that the gates are gone, the need for help to make something public is gone, and those other things -- publicity, improving the product, monetizing, etc. -- can all be done by lots of organizations, rather than just a few. Thus, there is no need for gatekeepers, but (once again), it's all about the enablers. The enablers help make your work better, but still leave you and the work at the center. The gatekeepers stripped your work from you for a pittance. It's a very different world, but it's a much better world for creators -- and it all comes back to the fact that publishing is no longer a job, but a button.

from the depends-on-how-you-look-at-it dept

We've certainly talked quite a bit about the institutional-level corruption of the way Congress and lobbying works, but a recent This American Life episode, done in partnership with the Planet Money team takes a much deeper dive into how lobbying works. You absolutely should listen to it. It's really fascinating, even for folks who follow a lot of this stuff. There is also a full transcript, but hearing the whole thing is quite fascinating. Among the elements that are most interesting are the details of just how much time and effort goes into politicians raising money, and how the various fundraisers work.

But one thing that struck me in listening to it, was a comment made towards the end by (former) Senator Russ Feingold, who points out that while most people think of lobbying as bribery, they often have the picture backwards. It's extortion:

I've had conversations with Democratic givers out here in the Bay Area and I'll tell you, you wouldn't believe the requests they're getting. The opening ante is a million dollars. It's not, gee, it'd be nice if you give a million. That's sort of the baseline. This is unprecedented. And, in fact, one thing that John and I experienced was that sometimes the corporations that didn't like the system would come to us and say, you know, you guys, it's not legalized bribery, it's legalized extortion. Because it's not like the company CEO calls up to say, gee, I'd love to give you some money. It's usually the other way around. The politician or their agent who's got the Super PAC, they're the ones that are calling up and asking for the money.

This is actually confirmed much earlier in the show, when former lobbyist Jimmy Williams explains that part of the job of the lobbyist is to avoid calls from politicians who are always asking for money:

Jimmy Williams: A lot of them would call and say, "Hey, can you host an event for me?" And you never want to say no. Actually, no. You always want to say no. In fact, you always want to say no. But, you could look on your phone with these caller IDs and you would be like, really? I'm not taking that call.

Alex Blumberg: Oh, so you would dodge calls for fundraising?

Jimmy Williams: Oh yeah. Every lobbyist does. Are you kidding? You spend most of your time dodging phone calls. Oh yeah.

What's equally stunning as you listen to it, is how much everyone seems to dislike the system. The politicians hate having to spend many hours each day fundraising (which they do from phone banks across the street from the Capitol, because they're not allowed to do it from their offices). The lobbyists hate having to focus on raising money for the politicians. The donors hate getting the calls asking for more money. One politicians talks about how he burned out all his friends:

Walt Minnick: You essentially wear out your friends and you wear out the people who are your natural supporters, because if someone writes you one check or comes to a fundraiser, they get on a list. And three or four months later you call them back again. And the best thing about being an ex-congressman is my friends now return my phone calls.

The show concludes with a fascinating discussion between Senators John McCain and Russ Feingold, who famously passed campaign finance reform a decade or so ago, only to see most of what they worked for get tossed aside by the Supreme Court's Citizens United case. McCain explains that the Supreme Court ruled the way it did because it simply has no idea how corrupt the political system is today:

John McCain: At first, I was outraged. The day that Russ and I went over and observed the arguments, the questions that were asked, the naivety of the questions that were asked and the arrogance of some of the questioners, it was just stunning. Particularly Scalia with his sarcasm. Why shouldn't these people be able to engage in this process? Why do you want to restrict them from their rights of free speech? And the questions they asked showed they had not the slightest clue as to what a political campaign is all about and the role of money that it plays in political campaigns. And I remember when Russ and I walked out of there, I said, Russ, we're going to lose and it's because they are clueless. Remember that day we were over there, Russ?

Russ Feingold: Absolutely, John. I couldn't agree with you more. It clearly was one of the worst decisions ever of the Supreme Court. The trouble with this issue-- and I think John would agree with this-- is people have gotten so down about it, they think it's always been this way. Well, it's never been this way, since 1907. It's never been the case that when you buy toothpaste or detergent or a gallon of gas, that the next day that money can be used on a candidate that you don't believe in. That's brand new. That's never happened since the Tillman act and the Taft Hartley Act. And so, people have to realize this is a whole new deal. It's not business as usual.

So why doesn't it get fixed? Well, because the people in power now know how to use the system to win, so they're afraid to mess with it, and potentially lose their ability to use the system as it stands now to succeed.

Russ Feingold: We managed to get-- against all odds, we did get people. It took a lot of hard work. Now the problem is, of course, is people are reticent to do that because they got elected under the system.

Alex Blumberg: So it's just fear of change?

Russ Feingold: Sure. When you win a certain way, your people say to you, hey, this is how we do it and this is how we won. We better not mess with success. I think that's one of the problems in this presidential race, where not only the Republicans, but even my candidate, President Obama, has opened the door to this unlimited money through some of his people. It's hard to get people to change something after they win that way. And that's one of my worries about it.

It really is worth listening to the whole thing if you want to understand the institutional, unavoidable level of corruption in DC -- even if it's not the way you may have suspected it worked. The folks at Planet Money have also done some follow up stories that are interesting, including a detailing of the most and least lucrative committee assignments. In the full episode, they explain that committee assignments are all a part of the corrupt process. If you get on a "good" committee (define by its ability to raise more money from lobbyists), it also means that your party demands that you pay more money back to the party, or you may lose that lucrative committee seat. Still, it may surprise some folks that the least lucrative position is on the Judiciary Committee. That's the committee that handled SOPA and PIPA... which involved no shortage of lobbyists. The cynical voice in the back of my head wonders if part of the SOPA/PIPA fight was really about turning the Judiciary Committee into a cash-flow positive committee, rather than a cash-flow negative committee.

from the what-was-the-problem-again? dept

One of the favorite tropes of the anti-piracy crowd is that all this unauthorized sharing is killing culture, pauperizing artists and generally making the world go to hell in a handbasket. The only pieces of evidence adduced in support of that position are the market reports put together for the copyright industries that (a) say the sky is falling and (b) base that analysis on the industries' own unsubstantiated claims.

In fact, as we know, for all of the copyright industries, the Sky is Rising. But that's only half the story, for alongside the traditional distribution channels, there are now entirely new ways in which people can create and share their creations. These have only emerged in the last few years, and so there is a natural tendency to underestimate their importance. But gradually figures are emerging that hint at the extraordinary scale of the creativity they foster.

What the use of Google's Content ID means is that the stuff copyright companies care about is already being caught. What's left varies from high-art mashups to how-to manuals to cat videos. But whatever it is, there's lots of it, with millions of hours of new content being uploaded every year.

Listed among the top 10 social networks and blogs in the U.S. by Nielsen in 2011, Wikia sees nearly 50 million global unique visitors per month, has over 339,000 communities (600 new ones added daily), and is witnessing 42% traffic growth year-over-year.

More specifically, gaming and entertainment communities have been Wikia’s bread and butter. The site hosts over 65k game wikis with 2.48M game pages. Elder Scrolls, for example has 8k+ content pages and it would take a month to read them all at 5 minutes per page.

Putting these kind of figures together with the daily output of hundreds of millions of users on Twitter and its Chinese analogs -- to say nothing of the near-billion Facebookers -- and what emerges is a ferment of creativity the likes of which the world has never seen before. So how can this be squared with the repeated claims that piracy is somehow leading to the death of culture?

I think the answer is that in the eyes of many commentators all this activity simply "doesn't count". That is, a video on YouTube is not "real" art, and a Tumblr post is not "real" literature. So when people complain that piracy is "killing" culture, what they are really expressing is their own incomprehension in the face of this new kind of art.

To admit that piracy isn't a problem, because it seems to be leading to more, not less creativity, would be to admit that the huge outpourings of user-generated content are indeed art, some of it even rather good art. And that, rather than any supposed harm from unauthorized sharing of copyright materials, is what many seem to fear. For the copyright industries and cultural commentators it calls into question their ability to make aesthetic judgments -- and hence money -- while for the artists, it questions their privileged position in society, and the special role of their art there.

from the a-picture-is-worth-a-thousand-copyrights dept

For the most part, furniture designs can't be copyrighted. Just like fashion, which thrives without copyright, the furniture industry serves as an excellent example of why intellectual property is not necessary to promote innovation and commercial success. Copying happens in these industries, and while it's sometimes fought on trademark grounds, the prevalence of cheap knockoff products is an unavoidable reality. But cheap knockoffs are exactly that, and they meet the demands of a different market segment, where low price is more important than quality, so the original designers can compete either by focusing on their strength in the high-end market, by entering the lower market with their own cheaper products, or both.

If you didn't watch the video, suffice to say the two knockoffs snap like twigs, while the original withstands the same punishment without any signs of damage. Fritz Hansen has rightly recognized what it offers that others don't, and has found a high-impact way of demonstrating this advantage. Naturally some people won't care: they will choose affordability over durability. But those people were probably never going to buy a $500 chair anyway, whether or not cheap alternatives for that specific design are available. Meanwhile, customers who value and can afford top-quality merchandise see a clear demonstration of what they're getting for their money, and one that reflects well not just on the Series 7 but on Fritz Hansen's entire line.

It's extremely rare, in any industry, for one creator to copy another without adding or changing something—a lower price point, better marketing, a better distribution model, a valuable curation service. This is how copying expands markets: originators and copiers must both focus the things that make them stand out, which means finding ways to make a product appeal to new and different people. Strong intellectual property protections exist to shut down such copying, but as industries like furniture and fashion demonstrate, this is unnecessary and potentially quite detrimental. Beating your competitors in court only proves that you were first—obliterating their products on YouTube proves that you're better.

from the say-what-now? dept

We've seen some bizarre advertising campaigns in the past, but I'm really left scratching my head about Skype's new ad campaign, the sole focus of which seems to be about bashing two other popular services: Twitter and Facebook.

Now, I use all three of these products -- but I use them for very, very different purposes. Skype is useful for all sorts of things, but it's an entirely different kind of service than Twitter or Facebook. And, actually, I stay in touch with plenty of people via Twitter and Facebook. More importantly, bashing Twitter and Facebook doesn't make me any more interested in using Skype. It's not like I'm suddenly going to say, "Hey person I normally communicate with via Twitter, thanks to this advertisement for The Skype, I now wish to have a real time audio or video chat with you." No, as always, I use the different tools for what they're good at, when appropriate.

I get that Skype wants to position itself as a social network, but it's not. It's a communication tool -- and it's good at what it does -- but attacking other services that don't compete with it doesn't make much sense. In fact, if anything, it leads me to think less of Skype. I really do find Skype's instant messaging and voice/video features quite useful. But over the last few years, the company has increasingly cluttered its interface and consistently made it more and more annoying, rather than more and more useful. The fact that it now thinks the proper strategy is to attack services that people use in totally different and completely non-competitive ways, only makes me think that Skype has lost its way and its vision. That makes me, a paying customer of Skype, concerned that the company is increasingly focused on chasing some silly strategy that will continue to make my life worse as a consumer. Such a stupid ad campaign just makes me wonder if I should be exploring real alternatives to Skype.